Archives for March 2006

After Christmas I started planning my next blog. I had a vague sense of what topics I would cover so started subscribing to RSS feeds so I could see what sort of content is posted to the niche. Since then as you can imagine things got a bit hectic so that is as far as I got. I just reviewed the blogs I subscribed to and I was shocked by what I saw.

I must have subscribed to around 20 blogs that broadly cover my potential niche. Of those 20 about 2 had original content on a regular basis, 1 had mostly unoriginal content mixed in with the occasional journal type post. These aren’t on the face of it bad blogs either, they are well written, look nice and are seemingly well maintained.

Is it a case of “follow the leader”, laziness or spam? Hard to say. Each case is probably different.

The sad thing is we have all seen this in other niches. Nick and I used to talk about it a lot in the SEO field. The SEO echo chamber is particularly strong, to the point where you would feel an urge to post about something everyone else was talking about just to not be seen as missing out on the story.

When selecting a subject for a blog, sustainability is very important. Not just is there a ready source of content, can you sustain the content with original material? I suspect a lot of these bloggers launched their blogs hoping the rest of the blogosphere would carry them. Linking out is not a bad policy, in fact it is good to introduce your audience to interesting content, but if 9/10 of your posts are linking to BoingBoing there is something deeply wrong.

So how do you stop your blog becoming just another a clone?

First step is when you do link out, add value. Add your own thoughts. Are you for or against? Why? Are there pieces of information missing that you could fill, make sure each story has all of “who, what, where, when, how”.

The best remedy is to create original content. You have your own experiences and thoughts to draw on. Look back, imagine the future, talk to people, interview people, brainstorm, start challenges, hold a competition.

Cast your net wider, if you only read a small pool of blogs then you are restricting your capacity for new ideas. Add more blogs to your feeds but also read magazines, books, watch television, get out and meet real people.

In the end if your blog can only follow others it might be worth ending it or changing the niche. Just another clone is not doing you or your audience any favours.

There’s lots of talk about how to launch products in the blogosphere, particularly much conversation around 37Signals book, Getting Real which details how they do it. It’s a damn fine read by the way, but there are definately other ways of doing a product launch.

The Web2.0 Hype Launch

I see several product launches a day, I’m a true technophile, and love to follow all the cool stuff (and all the shit stuff too) that people are trying to get out there into the ‘sphere. The “established” way runs something like this:

• Make a few hints
• Invite a few mavens into the fold
• Suck up to, or buy your way into “web2.0” sites hearts
• Launch invite only
• Pray that someone buys you before the app cripples under the weight of popularity

That’s a very generalistic list, but you get the point right?

The Community First Approach

The way we launched both Performancing Firefox and Performancing Metrics was somewhat of the reverse. We knew who are target audience was, so we decided that rather than risk not being able to buy or slime our way into the right crowd to get coverage of our launches, we’d develop our own crowd, first.

It runs something like this:

• Pinpoint the audience and start writing for them
• Do all the normal things you do to promote a blog, including a little strategic advertising to kick start if you can.
• Develop the community, put them above all else.
• Invite key members of the community into alpha’s, beta’s etc. Develop a sense of ownership before launching
• Launch and let your community be the first evangelists for your product

Again it’s generalistic, and much detail and caveats are missing, but it’s an approach that’s working well for us.

It’s not without it’s downsides. What if you spend all that time and money developing a community only to find that you’ve called it wrong, and they hate your products? How about time frame? It’s certainly slower this way…. One major caveat is that aswell as all of the above, we still send out traditional press releases, and email folks outside of the community we think our stuff will be interesting too.

But for me, and for Performancing in general, the community has always been central to success. And you know what? I don’t want to have to suck up to various folks in the web2.0 crowd to get them to write about our products. Fuck ’em. I’d rather stick my head in a bucket of cold sick.

I’m much more comfortable letting the people that help us shape our products, help us get the word out. Launching to a ready made audience that YOU identified, and that YOU targeted in every blog post that you wrote, is a lot nicer than spinning the wheel and hoping that a few folks like you enough to help you build the buzz you need to gain critical mass.

So far so good…

24hrs after launching Performancing Metrics, we are now tracking more than 2500 blogs. We’re a long way from where we want to be, but I think that we’re doing pretty well, and with your help and feedback, we’ll only get better!

On the last update, at 500 blogs tracked, I posted a whole bunch of great quotes from feedback. This time round, though the overwhelmingly positive reviews continue to pour in, I’d like to do something different.

A Few Facts About Performancing Metrics

• We now track over 2500 blogs
• We’re making public stats available later today
• Sometime soon, “Performancing Rank” will be unveiled
• The whole concept of PMetrics has been managed by just 3 people, from 3 different countries
• Web2.0 hype, can kiss my arse. PMetrics was released without any silly invitatoin nonsense, and it “just works”.
• We read every bit of feedback, and have already incorporated some of it into the next release scheduled for later today
• Our Javascript code is not obfuscated for a reason: We’ll be making it Open Source, and available for all to use as they see fit
• Yes, we WILL be incorporating Metrics into Performancing Firefox
• We’re having a lot of fun, and hope you are too 🙂

Please Help Us Spread the Word

In order for this to be successful, we need to get the word out, please help us do that. Blog about it, link to it, tell your friends and later today, share your public stats!

Feedback Welcomed!

YOU are the people we built this for, and we want you to help us shape the way Metrics develops, so please use the Metrics forum, your own blogs or your Performancing blogs to tell us what you think, how you would improve, and what you want.

We read all of it.

Support Requests will be moved out of this post into the forums, thanks!

Just a few short hours after launching, Performancing Metrics, is now tracking OVER 500 BLOGS! Woohoo! In way of celebration, I’d like to share a few of my favorite quotes from this site and others….

I’ve only been using this package for an hour and I can already tell you I love it…the seriously speedy response makes Google’s Analytics look like a dinosaur, and the blogcentric approach is exactly what was needed.”

“Love the new Metrics. I especially like the ability to use it on multiple blogs.” ~Various folks from the Performancing announcement thread

“It’s Blog-centric – While there are a number of free statistics packages out there I don’t know of too many comprehensive ones that are tailored specifically for blogs. This one is designed with bloggers as the primary user.”
~Darren Rowse, Problogger.net review of PMetrics

“Even while Performancing Metrics is still in beta, it is fast becoming one of our favorite stats packages. It allows us to analyze how blogs are actually doing in real time, which is critical when we often have spikes that last only a few hours, Getting stats in real-time lets us react to incoming traffic in ways that our other stats packages simply can’t.” ~Jeremy Wright, Ensight, B5Media

“I put it up on test this morning. It looks good. It already provides much more useful information that does Google (Urchin) but as has been pointed out, it is available to all. I’ll be adding it to more blogs in the next few days, I highly Digg it.” ~Dave Star, Amusingly titled Digg.com thread…

“Performancing Metrics is essentially the blog alternative to analytics programs like AWStats or Google Analytics which are geared more for traditional web sites. Performancing takes into account the everyday behind the scenes functions of a blogger and what is important to that’s blog’s statistics including comment and blog reading activity.” Loren Baker, Search Engine Journal

“Performancing Metrics really stands out as a blog metrics application for blogging pros.” ~Lee Odden, Marketing Blog

I hope to add a few more good quotes when we get to 1000, for now though, we’re all busy quaffing ale and frightening the neighbors in the Wilson household, and I hear Chris and Patrick are having a small tipple on Performancing Metrics launch awell!

Over the weekend some of you will have been aware that we moved the main website over to the new servers, the ones that house Performancing Metrics which is due to beta tomorrow. This went “mostly ok”, but there are some minor issues to clean up today.

• Login/Cache issues: If you are having difficulty logging in right now, please delete your cache, and all cookies. This will be dealt with, but for right now, that’s the fix.
• RSS feeds shortened: Some of my hacks were’nt put on the new system, so RSS feeds are at the Drupal default of being partial, sorry about that, it sucks, but is being fixed.
• Minor cosmetic issues: For example the buttons on the forums. Again these are being dealt with today.

If you’re having any other problems, or spot anything screwey, please let us know in this thread, and we’ll get it sorted ASAP

ADDED: If you do the above, and are still having login problems, email [email protected] and we’ll get it fixed for you.

thanks!